In the often flamboyant world of hedge fund management, Jerry Trotter was something of a celebrity. He’d already enjoyed one very successful career as a plastic surgeon, catering mostly to the moneyed ladies of New York’s Upper East Side, for whom he performed face, eye, and buttock lifts. In truth, Trotter was a better showman than he was a surgeon. He knew, like everyone in the medical profession, that during medical training grades counted more than the need to display particularly good physical skills in obtaining training positions in such surgical specialties as the eye or brain, or in plastic surgery. Trotter had made sure he always got good grades to make up for his hand-eye coordination, which was poor enough for him to find surgery a taxing grind. But that was in the past, and he didn’t need good hand-eye coordination to manage money.

Trotter had always enjoyed looking after his own money and taking the odd risk here and there. After years of working six days a week at his practice, he had a lot of it to manage. Trotter had known Max Higgins for years and well enough to know he was keen to strike out on his own from his trading position at Goldman. Trotter made a proposition to Higgins: we’ll set up a fund, you run it and teach me what you know, and I’ll supply the money. It worked, and Trotter quickly found that his patients trusted him and were grateful and many were happy to let him invest for them. Trotter was a quick study and soon his fund, the immodestly and unimaginatively named Trotter Holdings, was heading toward the middle rank of name funds.

“So, Edmund, Russell, what was so urgent that we had to meet today?”

Russell looked over at Edmund before he started. The delay in Trotter being able to meet with them had at least allowed Edmund and Russell to decide how they were going to present their news to Trotter. They’d sat in a diner on Lexington Avenue for an hour and strategized.

“We have a potential public relations issue we want to give you a heads-up about. We thought you might be able to help us get out ahead of the possible publicity—nip it in the bud, so to speak.”

“Edmund, has your checkered past finally caught up with you?” Jerry asked, not sounding as though he was joking at all.

“We’ve heard about some medical research that’s taking place,” Russell continued, to spare Edmund from having to respond. “It’s at an experimental stage, with no guarantee it’s going to work or anything, but in some quarters it’s being taken more seriously than in others.”